The next step

I'm back in Singapore from Taiwan, and I've got some pretty big news. I'm starting a company in Singapore. I originally decided I was going freelance and keep travelling, but when I was in Singapore a month ago, my friend Hua pitched a business idea to me. It was a little fuzzy at the time, but I've always liked the idea of starting my own business, but I've never had the catalyst to go and do it.

The business we're going to start is a digital business consultancy. We don't like to call it that, but it's a new kind of business that takes from several different kinds of businesses. We want to work with content creators such as youtubers, musicians, artists and help them to monetise their content. This is a very similar concept to those of the multichannel networks such as Maker Studios, who recently was bought by Disney for $500 million. So there's definitely an exit strategy.

We will help them to make money by getting sponsorship deals with brands and helping to manage their own digital rights. By working with big brands, that's where we will help big brands enter new markets by using the content creators as a bridge. Content creators already have great reach, but don't make enough money from their content and brands have money to spend on marketing. The partnership will be mutually beneficial and will be as good (if not better) and cheaper than traditional advertising. Great content sells better than any advert. User engagement is key.

This is our digital consultancy side as we will be helping both parties to increase their revenue, reach as well as advertising and monetisation strategies.

The other side of our business is going to focus on products. These products we're going to build for our clients at first as MVPs, and if we see a demand for it we'll expand on it and try and make a white label or consumer product. These could be platforms, to say house the content we're representing or it could be analytics material (because Google analytics is already far too complex for the average user).

We don't want to be doing consulting forever, but with the data we gather from consulting, we're sure to find a great idea we can turn into a product/platform based business. And with this my travels after 6 months has come to a halt. Onwards and upwards